Endocrine disrupting chemicals: Estrogenic activities of indoor dust in kindergartens

Estrogen-like Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EEDCs) interfere with the synthesis, secretion, transport, metabolism, binding action, or elimination of natural blood-borne hormones. They bind onto estrogen receptors, mimicking or blocking the action of natural hormones.

By disrupting the endocrine system of an organism, many health problems can be provoked even in the following generations. Effects include a change in development, change in fertility, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity, breast cancer and prostate cancer.

EEDCs are abundantly found as plasticizer (e.g. phthalates) or as flame retardants (e.g. PBDEs) in plastics (e.g. in toys). These non-chemically bound additives can easily migrate to the surrounding environment and attach to fine dust particles. For young children, indoor dust constitutes one of the major exposure routes.

Analyzing a dust sample by mass spectrometry (e.g. LC-MS or GC-MS) can become very expensive due to the large amount of possible EEDCs and cannot account for any antagonist or synergetic effects. Unknown EEDCs, still a very large group of components, cannot be measured by traditional analysis and can thereby not be included in a risk assessment.

Using the ERE-CALUX bioassay, a receptor based technique, solutions to these problems will be given by measuring an overall endocrine disrupting activity.